You’ve never seen Oshawa’s military history like this before
Museum uses modern technologies to bring history to life
Oshawa’s Ontario Regimental Museum is using augmented reality technology to bring military history to life. Using a smartphone, museum goers can see videos related to various exhibits, as well as some portraits brought to life, explaining who they are and what they did with the regiment.
By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express
It’s a collision of the old and the new, the futuristic and the historic as the Ontario Regimental Museum brings augmented reality to the world of Oshawa’s military history.
Using a combination of local and international technologies, the city’s military museum has become the first in the world to use augmented reality technology in a museum setting.
“You can say that we’re jumping on the augmented reality bandwagon, but we were actually there first,” says Jeremy Neal Blowers, the museum’s executive director.
“There is a huge interest in this technology…and if it draws people to the content, then we’re meeting our mission of educating the public.”
The new feature uses the UK-based app Blippar, combined with Whitby-based Talking Ancestors to bring portraits in the museum to life.
Visitors can now use their smartphones and simply hold it in front of one of the museum’s many pictures and watch as it comes to life and speaks about who they are and what they did as part of the Ontario Regiment. According to Blowers, the initiative has been a big success.
“This entire thing was a pilot project and it’s been successful, but this year we learned a lot and…over the winter, it’s my job to expand this massively,” he says.
That expansion has already begun to bring the technology to the museum’s most popular features.
“People come here to see tanks,” Blowers says. “We draw them here, we educate them, we bring history to life, but a lot of people are just coming here because they want to see a tank.”
And unless visitors are lucky enough to attend one of the museum’s Tank Saturday events, which has several of the museum’s war machines in action, the vehicles typically stay put.
But with augmented reality, that can change. By using the same app, visitors can scan the information placards in front of the vehicles and watch videos of the tank or car in motion, with options to visit web resources with troves of further information.
Currently, eight portraits and 20 tank placards are active with the Blippar app, but Blowers says the plan is to include more and more in the coming years.
And while the museum is proud to be the first in the world to embark on such a project, Blowers says it’s about more than just technological enhancement – it’s about the experience.
“The material interacts with you and I feel that it gives an experience,” he says. “I think people will walk away more educated on the subject matter…but they’ll also feel that they’ve experienced it.”
This Friday, Nov. 11, the Ontario Regiment will once again have a large contingent of their vehicles involved in the Remembrance Day parade.
The parade is set to begin at 10:25 a.m. at the R.S. McLaughlin Armouries before travelling to the Memorial Park cenotaph, where the ceremony is set to being at approximately 11 a.m.